


neverland

by ikvros



Category: Given (Anime), Given (Manga)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Childhood Memories, M/M, sad peter pan metaphors?, that's it that's the fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-31
Updated: 2019-08-31
Packaged: 2020-09-30 21:48:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,095
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20454071
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ikvros/pseuds/ikvros
Summary: The sunlight in the stairwell is warm.There’s a stillness here—a quiet that exists almost nowhere else, because the city is loud, and Mafuyu’s head is always full of noise: the songs he can’t stop humming, cicada cries that echo long after the ground freezes over, all of the words he never said, and all of the words he can never take back.In which a lost boy is found twice.





	neverland

**Author's Note:**

  * For [crownsandbirds](https://archiveofourown.org/users/crownsandbirds/gifts).

_ i. an awfully big adventure_

One summer afternoon, in a way that he will never be able to measure or repay him for—though Mafuyu will spend his entire life trying—Yuuki changes the course of his life.

It’s _ that _ afternoon that Mafuyu speaks for the first time in days over the buzz of the summer cicadas, to confess in broken syllables to a stranger something his father would beat him black and blue for. That’s where it starts, but that’s not where it ends. When policemen come to take his father away, Yuuki grabs his hand. 

He never lets it go after that.

It feels a bit too good to be true, at first. Mafuyu doesn’t believe in magic; has neither the blind optimism nor the “proof” kids at the park boast about—but when Yuuki says it exists, he believes him. How can he not? It’s in the sure warmth of his palm, his unending smile, and the fistfull of loose earth he cascades over the top of Mafuyu’s head.

“Pixie dust,” he says, with another beaming, kilowatt grin. It’s so bright it hurts to look at, so Mafuyu looks down at his soil-covered arms instead. More of it rains down from his hair. He blinks it from his eyelashes. “Now you’ll have a really good first day of school tomorrow.”

“It looks like dirt to me,” Mafuyu says, and that’s all. He’s covered in it, utterly filthy. His father would kill him if he saw him like this. But he’s not at home, and his mom says he’s never coming back, so all that will be waiting for Mafuyu as the sun starts to set on this last day of summer is a very thorough bath. 

“It’s _ pixie dust,” _ Yuuki insists. He gets this look in his eyes that Mafuyu is quickly coming to understand means business, but his frown is the kind that means he’s not really mad, and it disappears after a second, anyway. “If it looks like plain dirt to you, that just means you don’t believe enough. Magic is finicky like that.”

Mafuyu asks curiously, blinking, “Are you a pixie?”

Yuuki laughs and pulls him along the footpath. Their palms are sweaty and itchy and hot where they are pressed together, but only the diverging sidewalks of their houses can pry their fingers apart. It’s just until tomorrow, but Mafuyu still feels a spike of something unpleasant in his stomach as they part for the night. It’s a feeling he’ll learn to quell; to dampen, but never put out.

“Mafuyu,” Yuuki calls, just before he reaches the threshold. When Mafuyu turns to look back at him, his face is gentle and hopeful. His eyes flicker like stars in the evening lamplight. “You do believe, right?”

Mafuyu doesn’t know if he _ really _ believes in magic yet. But he does believe in Yuuki, so he gives a small nod that makes Yuuki smile that wonderful smile again. 

The stuff he’s covered in still looks like dirt when his mom helps wash it off in the bath, but when Mafuyu falls asleep that night, he dreams about flying. He flies over their ward, and the parts of Tokyo he’s never been to before, and eventually the ocean, where the big bright moon breaks over the waves. Hiiragi’s there. Yuuki is, too. 

It’s his hand that’s keeping Mafuyu in the sky. 

He does have a really good first day of school. And mostly, it’s because Yuuki’s by his side—but maybe, Mafuyu thinks, the pixie dust helped too.

_ ii. the ticking crocodile_

Being in love with someone who never grows up is as exciting as it is troublesome.

Neither of them believe in magic anymore, but the way Yuuki pulls him down the deserted school hallway reminds Mafuyu of all those summers spent in the trees and in each other’s bedrooms, where they’d huddle under the blankets with a flashlight and a book as the rest of the world slept. 

Conspiratorial, thrilling, _ fun. _ This feels exactly like those times—except for the way Yuuki pushes him against the wall and kisses him senseless.

Mafuyu knows it’s coming, and yet he’s still startled when Yuuki’s lips come down warm and familiar over his; he wants to be annoyed, and yet he finds himself kissing back, finds his hands fisting in the front of Yukki’s school blazer and pulling him _ closer_. School’s out for the day, and most students have gone home already, but anyone could walk down this hall and see them like this. The thought itself makes Mafuyu burn with shame. 

That’s what Yuuki wants, though. Instead of just being happy with calling him his boyfriend like a normal person, he’d rather claim him like this in front of god and the world—and Hiiragi and poor Shizu-san, more than once. It’s troublesome. It’s exciting. Mafuyu is the one that chases after their kiss when Yuuki pulls away.

“I have work,” is what Yuuki pants against his mouth. “So I can’t walk you home today. But I miss you.”

Mafuyu’s mood instantly darkens. They haven’t walked home together in over a week.

“And tomorrow?”

“Ah. Since we have a break, I’ll be in the studio all day tomorrow…” 

Mafuyu needs space to properly reign in the torrent of angry words that curl in his throat and threaten to burst out. “Okay,” he says tightly, pushing at Yuuki’s chest. 

Yuuki pouts as he backs up. “You’re mad.”

“No, I’m not.”

“You are. I know your not-mad-mad face.”

“I don’t have a face like that.”

“You’re wearing it right now.”

Mafuyu frowns outright at the half-smile that tugs at Yuuki’s lips. He doesn’t understand what’s so amusing about the widening rift between them. When Yuuki lays a hand on his shoulder, he jerks it away, and immediately misses the warmth. “Just go. You’ll be late, right?”

“Mafuyu—”

“I don’t want to fight,” Mafuyu says, turning away. “I’ll text you later.”

“Hey!” When Yuuki grabs his hand, he wants to rip that away, too. But the heat of his fingers, the strength of his grip, the hurt in his voice—the hurt Mafuyu caused—all of those things make him pause. It’s not right to shut Yuuki out like this, to punish him for existing separately, for venturing outside of a world that has only ever been theirs. It’s childish. Mafuyu feels like the one who hasn’t grown up.

“Sorry,” he murmurs without turning around. He wants to say _ I miss you, too. _ He wants to say _ I don’t like being without you so often. _ He wants to say _ I love you, so please don’t let go. _ But Mafuyu can never find the words when he needs them most, so he lets the silence hang between them, and hopes everything he feels will come across in the way he squeezes Yuuki’s hand.

When Yuuki wraps his arms around him from behind, for some reason, Mafuyu wants to cry.

* * *

_ iii. _

_ “I can't live without you.” _

_ “Would you die for me, then?” _

* * *

_ iv. second star to the right, and straight on til' morning_

He’s had this dream before. The moon is so close that it fills the cloudless black sky, and makes the sea below sparkle in its light. He’s soaring over it, and though Mafuyu is afraid of heights, for some reason, he’s not scared now. Maybe it’s because someone is holding his hand, and he knows intrinsically that he won’t fall as long as they don’t let go. 

Mafuyu’s had this dream before, but something doesn’t feel right. Hiiragi’s not here this time. The sea is still. And instead of an endless horizon, he sees the skyline of the city in the distance. He’s not flying away from home, he realizes. He’s returning. And the person taking him there is Yuuki.

Mafuyu thinks that they should be all grown up. But when he looks where their hands are joined, he finds that they’re small and soft, and joy overtakes him as he lays eyes on Yuuki’s young face. No time at all has really passed, then. For just a moment, everything in the world is right. His heart lifts, and he squeezes Yuuki’s hand tighter as they reach the city lights. 

It’s a relief that doesn’t last.

“I missed you,” Mafuyu says, once they settle atop the roof of his childhood home. The neighborhood is dark and quiet. It feels like summer, but nothing sings. “Where have you been?”

Yuuki just smiles at him and motions toward the endless expanse of sky above. Mafuyu thinks the stars look strange.

“Oh. But you’re staying here with me now, right?”

Yuuki’s smile disappears. He shakes his head.

Mafuyu frowns, and that feeling he hates pools in his stomach. “Can I go with you, then?”

Yuuki looks sad. He opens his mouth to speak, but no sound comes out. He mouths, _ “Not this time.” _ He keeps looking at Mafuyu with eyes that are as big and round as he remembers, but full of something he doesn’t understand. It’s a look he’s only ever seen his mother wear the day she told him their cat got hit by a car. It’s a look that makes him want to cry, and so he does, because this body doesn’t know how to hold that feeling down.

Yuuki wipes away his tears like always.

“What will I do without you?” Mafuyu asks, leaning his wet cheek into the heat of Yuuki’s palm. “You’re supposed to always be by my side. If you leave, I’ll be all alone.”

Yuuki shakes his head again, vigorously. _ “Never,” _ he mouths. The hand on Mafuyu’s cheek settles over his chest. _ “In here.” _

“But I want you _ here!” _ Mafuyu squeezes Yuuki’s other hand as hard as he can for emphasis. Yuuki squeezes back, face anguished, and then he throws his arms around Mafuyu’s shaking body, and pulls him close. When Mafuyu buries his face in his shirt, he smells detergent, and sunshine, and something else that awakens memories he shouldn’t yet have. Cologne, he thinks, but not the kind his father wore.

“I love you,” Mafuyu whispers, clinging tightly. “Please don’t let go.”

In the end, it’s the rising sun that takes him away. Though he’s wrapped in a sweater that smells faintly like him, when Mafuyu blinks into the morning light, Yuuki’s still dead.

_v. if you cannot teach me to fly, teach me to sing _

The sunlight in the stairwell is warm. 

There’s a stillness here—a quiet that exists almost nowhere else, because the city is loud, and Mafuyu’s head is always full of noise: the songs he can’t stop humming, cicada cries that echo long after the ground freezes over, all of the words he never said, and all of the words he can never take back. 

This place makes him think of Yuuki. It’s strange, because Yuuki was rarely ever still _ or _ quiet, and he would surely not be that in this place. His voice would echo off the walls. He would fill the stairwell with his laughter. He would probably try to kiss Mafuyu, and Mafuyu would probably let him, because he’s never seen anyone else in this nook of the school.

So it is strange. But Yuuki’s effervescence was not unlike the sun’s—neither was his warmth, which encompassed Mafuyu the same way the noon light does now. And neither was the way he set on the world. 

If Mafuyu holds still enough, he can feel how the earth turns beneath his feet. It’s been so many days now since Yuuki left, but Mafuyu never gets any further from missing him. The world moves around him, and in some ways, he moves with it. In others, he travels backward—has turned back into that kid who always looks down at his feet and never speaks unless spoken to. He knows it would make Yuuki unhappy, but he’s not here to pour dirt on Mafuyu’s head and tell him it will make everything alright. Yuuki’s not here to hold his hand, or make him laugh, or ruin his lunchtime nap in the stairwell.

Someone else does that last thing, though—a boy from the class next door. 

He replaces the rusted strings on Yuuki’s guitar even though he doesn’t even know Mafuyu’s name. His words are rough, but he’s kind. Mafuyu can tell, because he knows an unkind person when he meets one. And when he strums that first abrupt, out-of-tune chord, for a split second, all the noise in Mafuyu’s head ceases to exist.

His name, Mafuyu learns, is Uenoyama Ritsuka. 

**Author's Note:**

> the idea of yuuki as peter pan would absolutely not leave me alone. all of the little section titles are pulled from quotes/concepts in the book by j.m. barrie. i've listened [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5usQ44zs__4) so many times that i never want to hear it again. and i definitely cried once or twice. 
> 
> thank you for reading ♡ come find me on [twit](http://twitter.com/ikvros) if you want!


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